The Missouri state law preventing teachers from communication exclusively with students on internet sites has been repealed

The
Missouri State Teachers Association filed a lawsuit against the state, state governor and
attorney general last month to battle a new law that would forbid teachers from
having "exclusive access" with students on Internet sites.

The law, which was to take effect on August 28 and was called the Amy Hestir
Student Protection Act (after a Missouri student who was molested decades ago),
aimed to prevent inappropriate behavior between teachers and students by restricting
out-of-school contact. Teachers would not be allowed to interact with students
on the internet "exclusively," meaning through private messages. The
contact would have to be publicly seen by parents and administrators.

But teachers fought back, saying that students needed that out-of-school
contact for help with homework or confidentiality about subjects like bullying.

Now, the Missouri State Teachers Association has won the battle. The law has
been repealed through the Missouri Stat Senate, according to ZDNet.

Senator Jane Cunningham (R-Chesterfield), who sponsored the Amy Hestir Student
Protection Act, filed Senate Bill 1 this month, and the Senate now passed SB1
33-0. It will now be taken to the House, be assigned to a committee, and if
approved, will become eligible to be debated on the House floor.

SB1 requires each Missouri school district to have a written policy regarding
employee-student communication by March 1, 2012.

The Missouri State Teachers Association also asked the Circuit Court of Cole
County to review the constitutionality of the law's social media section last
month. Teachers worried that this new law was broad enough to ban them from
having a Facebook, or from "friending" their own children who are
Missouri students. They argued that this infringed on First Amendment rights.

Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem granted the group a preliminary injunction
that lasts for 180 days and will expire February 20, 2012.

The Missouri State Teachers Association has not dropped its lawsuit despite
this win.

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I have hidden keyloggers on my comps that require a 20 character password to access and that automatically send logs of each comp to my own FTP server daily. Oh yea, it also has the ability to log social network chats, both directions, that includes Facebook. There are ways to know what your child is doing.

Not that I don't appreciate your perspective, but I don't personally agree with such surveillance unless my kids have earned it lol. And on the other hand, your kid could always use another computer (maybe not at your house) or a prepaid phone to communicate inappropriately with a teacher.

But again both of our comments just go to show how stupid this law is.

The problem is if you ever confront your child with anything you secretly logged, they will know you've been spying on them the whole time, and lose any and all trust in you. So they will, in the future, go out of their way to do stuff you forbid (or just ignore you if your lucky). I know cause i used to be one of those little bastards, when i lived at my mother who was and still is very controlling. When i lived at my dad's i got all the freedom i wanted, including sitting behind a PC for 8 hours straight secluded from the real world (not that my dad didn't check in by bringin me food, but i was allowed to lock my door if i wanted and my dad always knocks before entering. if i say no, he doesn't enter).

Have i done some stuff on the internet my dad didn't approve off? yeah. Lot's of which he doesn't know about. starting with downloading virusses and losing all data. But i lost all my games in the process which i really didn't like so i got carefull because of that. I also learned how to remove virusses which served me well in my IT education many years later.

now i'm an adult And i can run my PC without a virus scanner, just install and scan once a year then deinstall, and still all scans will come up clean as a whistle. Because i was allowed to take risks as a child, because without risk you won't make mistakes, without mistakes you won't ever learn a thing.

That's just virusses. I'm not going into my cyberrelations. But i can say, even though i made (a lot of) mistakes, a few of my healthiest developments came from those. Which i never would've gotten if i knew my dad was monitoring me.

It's not always benificial to actually know what their doing. Even though i can completly understand the feeling of wanting to.

You're seriously spying on your kids. What if it was the other way around?

Children has a need for privacy just as we all have and if you're not trusting them then what sort of signal is that.

If you want to know what you're kids are doing then talk to them and if you are afraid they will keep something important from you then make an effort and work on building a trusting relationship with them.